The Power of Relationship   

 “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”  1Thessalonians 2:8

 We are about to embark on a journey.  The initial stage of this journey will be the next five weeks.  But the journey won’t end after five weeks.  We will have only just begun.  I pray that we will continue on this journey long after that.  These five weeks are meant to get us focused and grounded.

 We have committed these Lenten weeks to centering on an emphasis called, “Head to the Heart to the Home.”  The green brochure that has been circulating around here for a week or so outlines what this emphasis is all about.  It is based on a book by David W. Anderson and Paul Hill entitled Frogs Without Legs Can’t Hear.  I pray that many of you will pick up a copy, read it, and if you can, join in our book discussion the next five Thursdays.  If you can’t make the discussion group, I urge you to at least get the book and read it. It will be an enriching experience.

 This emphasis is not a new program, or a new gimmick, or the latest fad.  It’s a mind-set and a heart-set. It’s an orientation to life in the church that I pray, we, as a congregation, will increasingly and deliberately embrace and integrate into our personal lives and our congregational life as time goes on.  The next five Sundays my sermons will focus on The Five Principles of the Life of the Church discussed in the book.  There is nothing really new about this.  The principles are biblically rooted and are principles that were fostered and advanced by the earliest Christian community.

 Why are you here today?  On what is likely a day off for you what made you get out of bed, get yourself ready, climb in the car, and travel to this place?  Why did you come here today?  I realize that our answers to that question would be incredibly diverse, but no matter how diverse our answers might be, I am sure that most, if not all, of our answers would share a single common thread: You consider faith to be a significant thing – or you wouldn’t be here.  This is the common thread: You consider faith, specifically faith in Jesus Christ, to be a significant thing.

 Even if someone dragged you here today, the fact remains that someone considers faith to be a significant thing.   If you are not sure about your faith, if you are seeking, you are at least considering that faith might be a significant thing.

 So where does faith come from?  Is faith like a degree or a diploma? If I take all the classes, do all the work, and pass all the tests, do I acquire something called faith that I can hang on my wall?

 I don’t think so!  If that were true then what happened to all those young people who went through confirmation over the last 50 years. Those of you who went through that experience and are still here are the exception.  I hope you realize that. You are exceptional in that sense. You have faith in spite of your church experience, and more specifically in spite of your confirmation training growing up.  Some studies have shown that after confirmation over 70% dropped out and have never come back to the church.  Now that doesn’t mean they are not people of faith, but we can say that their experience did little to help them connect faith and church participation. If anything, it apparently did the opposite.

 Some of you have said to me, “Why don’t we do confirmation like we used to when I was a youth?  I then ask what their experience was like, and I usually get something like, “Oh man, we had to memorize the whole Bible, recite it in front of the congregation, and leap tall buildings in a single bound?  It was painful!  It was intimidating!  Why don’t we do that anymore?”

 Because it didn’t work very well, did it?  Maybe for you it did, but what about the other 75% who have never been seen again, except for maybe at Christmas and Easter?

 So where does faith come from?   

 The Bible is pretty clear that faith is not something that we acquire on our own. In 1 Corinthians 12:3 Paul says “...no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

 Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing but the gift of God.”

 Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”

 In other words faith comes from be acted upon.  Faith emerges as the result of an outside force taking the initiative and acting upon me.  Faith is not something I choose out of the blue, in a vacuum, all on my own, but faith is the result of the Holy Spirit working upon me; getting to me, getting inside of me, filling me, challenging me, moving me, stretching me.

 And how does that happen?   How does the Holy Spirit do that?

 I grew up in a Lutheran Church.  I went to Sunday school from 1^st grade on.  I attended worship.  I heard sermons. They weren’t very good, but I heard them. I went to youth group.  In other words, I was nurtured and cultivated in a church environment throughout my childhood.  But I will tell you this.  The reason I am a person of faith today is not because of any of those things, as important as they are.  The reason I am a person of faith today is because of my brother, and a youth leader, who both took a personal interest in me.  I am a person of faith because of a brother with whom I had a relationship, who mentored me; because of a youth leader with whom I had a relationship, who mentored me.  They shared with me why faith in Jesus Christ was a significant thing for them. That’s why I am a person of faith and why faith is a significant thing for me.

 The book, Frogs Without Legs Can’t Hear, reports the results of surveys taken among people of faith who have been a part of church life from the time they were children.  The question put to them was, “What or who has most influenced your life of faith?”  Overwhelmingly, in survey after survey the top answers were mother, father, grandparent, godparent, other family and friends. 

 Remember these were all church nurtured people, and what is so interesting is the things we might have expected them to name among their top answers, they did not name - things like: Sunday school, worship, pastor’s sermons, confirmation classes, and youth groups.  Instead, overwhelmingly they named a person who mentored them; who took interest in them, who had relationship with them; who shared their faith and opened their life to them.

 In our second reading Paul says, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”  

 What Paul is saying in this passage is that before everything else, the seeds of faith are planted and nurtured through personal relationship.  Paul traveled the Mediterranean world establishing churches, but the thing he often longed for the most was personal contact with the Christians of those congregations.

 Faith is not like filling a pail.  Faith is not like stuffing a bunch of information inside of my head, and if enough information gets stuffed into me, then out will pop something called faith.  That’s not it!   Faith is not like filling a pail, but rather faith is like lighting a fire.   My brother and a youth leader mentored me in such way that the Holy Spirit used them to light a fire in my soul – and it’s called faith. – and its burned in my soul ever since.

 In the last verses of the gospel of Matthew Jesus commissioned his eleven remaining disciples to go into the world and make disciples - just eleven disciples for the whole world.  It doesn’t seem like much!  They didn’t have any real credentials except their three-year mentoring relationship with Jesus – that’s it.  They had not attended seminary, received degrees, gone to workshops on church growth or seminars on evangelism.  But they had been mentored by Jesus, in a personal, trusting relationship, and Jesus had ignited a fire in their souls called faith, or we wouldn’t be sitting here this morning. 

 If you were here on the first Sunday of last November, All Saints Sunday, you might remember, we offered the opportunity for people to put the name on a slip of paper of a significant person, living or dead, who mentored you in faith and place it on one of the kiosks we had moved into the sanctuary.  It was a way recognizing and giving thanks for those “saints” who have touched our lives with their faith.  Over 200 slips of were hung on up on the kiosks!  I took time to read them, and many had more than merely a name, but beautiful little testimonies about how that person had provided mentoring.

 The first principle of life of the church that Anderson and Hill discuss in their book is “Faith is formed by the power of the Holy Spirit through personal, trusted relationships—often in our own homes.”   The kiosks on all Saints Sunday were a testimony to that truth.  Some of the ministry programming we are doing at Holy Love right now is based on this Biblical foundation.

 Currently we have 45 pairs of mentors and mentees at Holy Love. That’s 90 youth and adults developing a personal, trusting relationship.  We have a confirmation ministry of almost 40 middle school youth who regularly gather in a small groups setting with an adult mentor guide.  The purpose of these programs is not to, first of all, fill their heads with stuff, but to ignite a fire of faith through personal, trusting relationships. 

 As you leave worship this morning you will be handed a devotion guide that you can take with you and use as you gather as a household, or with a friend(s), or a co-worker(s).  It is meant to provide a way for you to connect on a deeper level with those significant others.  

 Whether you are aware of it or not, you have great influence upon the lives of others.  Whether you are aware of it or not you are a mentor to others: at home, at work, at play.   You have personal, trusting relationships with the significant others of your life.   The foundation and witness of the early Christian community was built upon these relationships, and we would do well to do no less.   

 The Lord Jesus calls us to be witnesses.  The very best place to begin our witness is in our personal, trusted relationships.  To be his witness doesn’t mean you have to be invasive or pushy about your faith.  It simply means you live out your faith with those significant people.  In our gospel this morning all Philip did was extend an invitation that pointed the way to Jesus.  It was an invitation that came out of a friendship that resulted in Nathanael’s eventual confession of faith, “Rabbi, you are the son of God.”  John 1:49

 To use the analogy in the book, “Frogs Without Legs,” we can have the best pastor and leadership in the world.  We can have exciting worship and incredible programs.  In other words the head and torso of the frog can look good. We can look like a frog and even sound like a frog. We can look like the church and even sound like the church.

 However, if we are not cultivating faith sharing relationships within the congregation; and encouraging faith sharing in our households; if we are not providing opportunities for people to share faith in personal, trusted relationships we are like a frog without legs.  We will look like the church and even sound like the church, but we will be missing the most crucial element; the legs to leap forward in the 21^st century and to move about in the world with a vital and dynamic faith.

 It begins with each and every one of us in the relationships of our households and with our loved ones and friends, and within our congregational life – that is if we truly believe that faith is formed and nurtured by the power of the Holy Spirit through personal, trusted relationships.

 Amen.